39. Cassiel
Ihead to Runara’s room, trailed by Robin.
There’s a moment when I almost go to grab a cane out of habit, before remembering I don’t need it anymore.
A smile lingers on my face for a moment, before I shake it away.
I’m grateful beyond words to have my sight back, but I’d prefer to be with Wren.
When will that feeling fade, I wonder. When will I stop seeing things and immediately thinking of her?
I knock lightly on Runara’s door and step inside. She’s crouched over her desk, brush in hand, dark hair pulled back in a ribbon that is already streaked with blue. The late evening sun pours through the tall arched window, setting her silhouette aglow.
“A bit late for painting, isn’t it?” I ask, stepping towards her. I raise her lock of blue-stained hair. “You’ll need a bath before bed, now.”
“I don’t mind.”
“The servants will, if they have to draw it for you.”
Runara mumbles something under her breath and turns back to her work. I mentally chastise myself for coming all this way just to reprimand her, however gentle my tone.
My attention falls to paintings and sketches scattered over her desk. It’s an utter mess, and a part of me wants to organise it, but I think she’s had enough of being told what to do today, and, in any case, this is what I came for.
“Anne tells me you’re quite the painter now,” I whisper. “She’s right. These are excellent.”
“Thank you,” she whispers. “They’re not as good as yours though… or Father’s.”
Some are landscapes—our battlements, the orchard trees in blossom, the river cutting silver through the city. The shapes are sometimes clumsy, but the colour in particular is skillful. She likes painting with light, too.
My eyes fall on another piece that looks like a ball of fire, only there’s a silhouette in the centre. I frown, moving it aside, only to find dozens of them in a piled heap. The silhouette isn’t a silhouette anymore, but a face with brown skin and golden eyes.
Wren.
Sheet after sheet of her. Wren robed in fire, Wren with flames pouring from her body, Wren with flaming wings arched high and terrible and beautiful, fire spilling from her back in radiant arcs.
“The night she tried to save Evander,” Runara says quietly.
My throat tightens.
The wings are not soft here. They are infernos. In one painting, Wren stands between a shadowed figure and a fallen body, her hands outstretched. In another, she is mid-air, eyes blazing, fire reflecting in armour and stone.
She looks… well, I don’t quite rightly know what she looks like. She’s too fiery to be an angel, but the fire looks like feathers.
I move along through the pile, searching for a distraction, and find some of Ru herself. She doesn’t draw images of herself in dresses. In her paintings, she’s wearing armour far too large for her narrow shoulders. She carries a sword and slays monsters.
Warrior Ru, reads one.
I reach out and trace the dried paint beneath the words.
“You don’t have to be a warrior, Ru.”
“Yes, I do,” she says softly.
I rub the back of her head. “I’ll protect you now, do you hear?”
Runara jerks away from my hand, her eyes blazing. “NO!” she screams. “I don’t want to be protected!”
I freeze, unsteady, unsure of if I should step closer or back away. “Ru—”
“I have to fight!”
Her hands ball into fists, brush clattering to the floor.
“No, Ru, no you don’t—”
“You and Evander both act like nothing bad can ever happen to me just because I have you. But I don’t. I don’t have you, and I don’t have Evander because he’s dead. Bad things happen to me all the time because I can’t protect myself! If I could, if I’d been better at fighting, then maybe, maybe…”
Her voice fractures. Tears spill down her cheeks.
“He got hurt because of me. Because I was there. Because he was worried about me and he didn’t see the person with…”
More tears. She swipes at them angrily.
“I couldn’t fight. I couldn’t even move.”
She shoves at one of the smaller piles of painting; it topples sideways against the wall in a flurry.
“It’s my fault. It’s my fault he’s dead.”
I cross the room in three strides and pull her into me.
She fights it at first—small fists against my chest—but then she collapses, clutching at my tunic as though I might disappear too.
For all the fears I’ve had over the past few months, losing her hasn’t been one of them.
I’ve done everything I can to keep her safe.
But Runara can’t do that for me. Never once have I thought to wonder what that must be like, even though a year ago, powerlessness was all I knew.
I fold around her carefully, one hand cradling the back of her head.
“I blamed myself, too,” I whisper into her hair. “I blamed myself because I didn’t get to him soon enough. I blamed myself for not being able to fight as well as I used to. I blamed myself for falling in love with Wren—”
“It’s not her fault—” she starts, indignant even through tears.
“I know. I know that now. It’s not her fault, and it’s not mine, and it’s not yours. I blame the person that killed him, and the person that ordered it.”
She pulls back slightly, eyes red and searching. “Wren’s grandmother ordered it, didn’t she?”
The truth tastes like iron. “Yes. Yes she did.”
“But Wren didn’t want to help her.”
“No, she really didn’t.”
Runara swallows. “People say her grandma killed our father because he killed her son. Is that true?”
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
The words hang heavy between us.
“Was our father a bad man?”
I close my eyes briefly, remembering him in flashes and segments—both the man in the forest who claimed the life of Wren’s father, and the one who illustrated the books he’d read to me at night.
“I… I don’t think so. No.”
“Was Wren’s father?”
“No. I actually think he was a lot like ours.”
Her brow furrows. “So why was he killed?”
I swallow. “The law demanded it.”
She stiffens in my arms. “The law says Wren should die too, doesn’t it?”
Every instinct in me bristles. “That’s not going to happen, I promise you.”
“It shouldn’t be happening at all.”
A year ago, I would have corrected her tone, explained the necessity, educated her about precedent. I’d tell her that some are dangerous. Some deserve to die.
I am still right.
But the argument isn’t.
It does not matter that some are dangerous. Anyone can be. Power shifts. Circumstances twist. Fear makes monsters of us all.
The law is what is dangerous. The law is what is wrong.
The law is what needs to be stopped.
But how can I change such a thing now that Evander is dead and we are in an almost outright war? Changing it will not make Nubaia concede. Not now. Not when blood has already been spilled. It will not make anyone less angry.
It will not bring my brother back.
Runara’s fingers clutch tighter in my tunic.
“I couldn’t move,” she whispers again, smaller now.
I tilt her chin up gently so she has to meet my eyes.
“Freezing is not weakness,” I tell her. “It is shock. It is fear. It is being human.”
“I don’t want to be human,” she says bitterly.
I almost laugh at that. “Neither do I, some days.”
She studies me, searching for mockery and finding none.
“I will teach you to defend yourself,” I say carefully. “If you want to learn. Properly. Safely. Not because you have to protect me—not because you have to protect anyone—but because you deserve to feel strong.”
Her breath hitches.
“But you aren’t responsible for Evander’s death,” I continue. “Do you hear me? You aren’t.”
Her voice is barely audible. “I still feel like I am.”
“I know.” I press my forehead to hers. “I still feel like I am, sometimes.”
I take her hand to kiss it, and realise she’s inked something onto her wrist. “What’s this?” I ask, drawing back her sleeve.
“Oh, um…” Runara reveals the marks a little sheepishly. I recognise the black lines almost immediately.
“Runes,” she clarifies, in case I don’t know. “Wren… Wren drew them on my hands the night she saved me. She said they were for protection and strength. Sometimes… sometimes I draw them back on.”
My chest constricts. I’m not sure if Wren activated them, or she merely gave them to Runara to give her some sense of protection and control in a moment where she had none.
“This… this one is for strength,” Runara explains. “And this one is for protection. I… I don’t know the words to make them work, though.”
“It wouldn’t matter if you did,” I tell her. “Only a fey can activate them.”
“Oh.”
She looks a little crestfallen.
“The word is procta for this one, though,” I tell her, tapping her wrist.
“Ooh, thank you.”
She smiles, and I kiss the top of her head again. She’s getting tall. I don’t like it. “It’s late,” I tell her. “You should get to bed.”
“All right,” she says. “Good night, Cass.”
“Good night, Ru.”
I turn to leave, heading towards the door. My fingers have almost finished curling around the door handle when I hear her voice.
“Procta,” she whispers.
I think nothing of it. I clutch the door handle, pull it down—
Something hums. A low, trembling note in the air, like glass singing under a fingertip.
Runara gasps.
I spin around.
A faint shimmer ripples outward from her skin, like heat rising from stone, then hardens—just for a heartbeat—into something visible. A curved shell of light snaps into place around her, pale and translucent, catching the lamplight in fractured colours.
The desk slams into it.
Wood cracks against the barrier with a sharp, jarring crack, as though it has struck solid glass. The whole thing shudders, halted inches from her body.
Runara cries out, stumbling back and scratching at the rune on her arm. The shimmering shell flickers and distorts, before it collapses in on itself with a soft, breathy whump, vanishing as suddenly as it appeared.
The desk crashes to the ground with a thunderous bang. Robin barks.
Runara stands frozen in the wreckage of sound, eyes wide, one hand still half-raised as if she can’t quite believe what she’s done.
“Ru—!”